Glimpsing the artisans behind the artefacts
The art and artefacts of ancient Egypt are still familiar around the world, but how much do we know about the people who created these objects? Matthew Symonds spoke to Helen Strudwick about the makers of ancient Egypt.
For some, Plato’s observation still rings true. In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher claimed in his Laws that a remarkable degree of stasis could be observed in ancient Egyptian artforms: ‘no painter or artist is allowed to innovate… or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones… And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms that they had 10,000 years ago’. While today we would see ancient Egypt existing for a period of more like 4,000 years, it is true that certain artistic themes can be traced across this span. This tendency for repetition is at odds with the freedom and individuality associated with artists in the modern world. As such, it can be easy to see the corpus of ancient Egyptian art and artefacts as primarily a collection of endlessly regurgitated generic forms produced by equally indistinguishable artisans. The resulting anonymity of ancient Egyptian artists is compounded by an apparently widespread – though not universal – restraint in signing their work. Little wonder, then, that study of ancient Egyptian crafts has traditionally focused on the images and objects themselves, rather than on what they can reveal about the individuals who created them.
Yet when you look more closely, traces of individuality can be found in many different forms. On one level, new styles demonstrably did emerge over the course of the millennia. Items such as jewellery were susceptible to the whims of fashion, while advances in technology like the development of the potter’s wheel and glassmaking presented new possibilities and a wider canvas to experiment on. At another level, there are ample opportunities to find traces of the people responsible for achievements ranging from monumental architecture to minute worked gems. Perhaps the most obvious insights into individual artisans can be found in inscriptions on funerary stelae, which document how they wished to be remembered. One, belonging to a man called Irtysen, declares ‘I am an expert artist/ craftsman, someone who is efficient at his craft’. Archaeology allows us to explore the workshops where sculptors toiled, or the kilns pushing ancient Egyptian thermal technology to its limits. Perhaps, though, the most vivid glimpses of these artisans as people can be found in more subtle traces, like the mistakes they concealed or the unfinished works that betray their methods. All of this, and more, is being explored in the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (see ‘Further information’ box).
Egypt inside out
‘For the last 40 years, the Fitzwilliam Museum has been looking at ancient Egyptian objects from the inside out’, says exhibition curator Helen Strudwick. ‘We’ve been trying to understand not only how the object was made, but why it was made in that particular way, who was commissioning these items, and what they were paying for. So, it’s a very broad spectrum of research that we’ve been doing here.’ In many ways, this approach can be traced back to that most celebrated of archaeological discoveries: the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1923, Howard Carter engaged a forensic scientist, Alfred Lucas, to conserve the materials within. Rather than rushing to apply preservatives, though, Lucas took care to study how these objects were made, and what with, before subjecting them to any conservation treatments. What was pioneering in the 1920s is standard practice for museums in the 2020s. Ever since the 1970s, when the Fitzwilliam appointed Janine Bourriau as its first professional Egyptologist, the museum has taken a keen interest in how these objects were made, undertaking detailed studies of material ranging all of the way from pottery to papyrus. In the exhibition, the artefacts are mostly divided by type, with sections devoted to stoneworkers, potters, makers of faience and glass, metalworkers, jewellers, makers of linen and basketry, woodworkers, papyrus-makers, and coffin-makers. The opening portion, though, asks how these varied professions saw themselves, and how they were seen by wider society.
‘I think it’s probably very similar to the way they sit today’, says Helen. ‘Perhaps not with the megastars at the very top, but there are definitely different levels of creativity and talent. So, when you look at the commemorative slab of Irtysen, he’s saying “I’m a really skilled artisan, I know how to do all these different things”. From this, it seems that status was measured in terms of your knowledge of the processes involved in making things. Ancient Egypt had quite strict rules about how things should be laid out. So the people at the top were the people who were doing the best work in that area. They manifest themselves by having these commemorative slabs made for them, and because of that we know some of their names.’
‘It’s clear that there was also a hierarchy of trade. The scribes, for example, regarded themselves as the pinnacle of achievement, again because of knowledge: they knew the language and could write using hieroglyphs, which were regarded as divine – the word for a hieroglyph is medu-netjer, meaning “the word of God” – and so they felt that they were somehow separate from other trades. Inevitably, then, they looked down on everybody else. There’s a magical element to sculptures as well, which were regarded as living images. This is reflected in one of the names for sculptors: sankh or “the one who gives life to”. If a statue was put into a temple, there would be a religious ceremony at the end of production, when the mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears of the object would be ritually opened, to allow it to have a full sensory experience. It was effectively brought to life. In fact, this was also true of temple inscriptions, with the birds and animals, and things like that, so they were all active on the walls. I sometimes think that the ancient Egyptians must have imagined a constant babble of sounds coming out of all these inscriptions.’
‘By contrast, potters appear to be right at the bottom of the pile. It seems as if they were equated with people who were makers of mud brick, because the word for both trades is the same. A text called the “Teaching of Khety”, which was – of course – written by scribes, satirises other trades, saying that “the potter is buried under the soil, even though he’s still alive. He gets more covered in mud than a pig”. Today, we can see the lovely things that these potters produced, but at the time it was seen as grubby work and therefore not necessarily something to be admired.’
Inevitably, there were hierarchies of skill within the individual trades, too. Often, some people would be tasked with designing or overseeing the production of the finished goods, for example, while others were actually making them. In certain cases, such as the manual hollowing out of a stone receptacle, this work could be extremely laborious. On other occasions, including painting vignettes on papyrus, the physical act of doing the work could involve a high level of technical ability and creative flair. A fine example of this comes from the Book of the Dead of Ramose. This compendium of spells was intended to help Ramose, a former senior royal scribe, negotiate the afterlife. The illustrations accompanying the spells showcase the talent and ingenuity of the artist or artists responsible, who managed to use the limited range of pigments available to dazzling effect. It is also from the funerary realm that we get glimpses of the realities of life for some less-august workers. Recent excavation of burials at Amarna, the desert city founded by the maverick Pharaoh Akhenaten c.1346 BC, has revealed the remains of individuals subjected to gruelling manual labour. The deceased were clearly involved with constructing the major new structures that were needed at the site. Many of these workers had stress fractures and were somewhat malnourished, indicating that they were not treated particularly well.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Made in Ancient Egypt will run at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 12 April 2026. For more information, including ticket prices, see https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/ exhibitions/made-in-ancient-egypt.
A lavishly illustrated volume to accompany the exhibition is also available: H Strudwick with T Clarke (2025) Made in Ancient Egypt (The Fitzwilliam Museum, ISBN 978-1 913645922). As well as discussing the individual artefacts, the book contains fascinating essays exploring aspects of the topic.
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CWA 135. Read on in the magazine (Click here to subscribe) or on our website, The Past, which offers all of the magazine’s content digitally. At The Past you will be able to read each article in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and Military History Matters.
